The Library for Health Information houses educational pamphlets available for physical access in the fifth floor atrium of Rhodes Hall. Credit: Gabe Burggraf | Design Editor
On the fifth floor atrium of Rhodes Hall in the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State, the Library for Health Information is tucked away — serving as a reliable source of evidence-based health information for patients, families, students and staff over the last quarter century.
The Library for Health Information is the consumer health branch of the Health Sciences Library, according to the library’s website. Judith Wiener, associate director for collections and outreach at the Ohio State Health Sciences Library, said the LHI first started as the Center for Health Information in 1996.
Missy Creed, consumer health librarian at the LHI, said the mission of the library is the same today as during its inception: to provide easily digestible, accurate health information by request at no cost to the consumer.
“We provide easy to read, easy to understand, reliable health information. All information is free and all requests are confidential,” Creed said. “It all forms in lay language, so there’s no doctor speak, no nurse speak.”
Wiener said various donors contributed to the foundation effort, including the James Cancer Hospital Solove Research Institute, the Ohio State Service Board, Harold F. Zieg and Pharmacia and Upjohn.
Creed said she uses the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State’s Patient Education department and The James for much of the library’s information.
“I get information from various sources, but all reliable sources and trustworthy information,” Creed said. “The information that you’re getting from me on your diabetes or high blood pressure or heart disease or whatever condition you may have — we research any health condition — it’s going to be reliable information.”
Creed said in order to analyze treatment and interpret conditions, patients need to understand the basis of their issues.
“Even if we were diagnosed with the same thing, you may have a completely different reaction to some things than I would,” Creed said. “It’s very important that the person brings back the information to have a better understanding of their health condition and how they’re being treated.”
Due to recent hospital restrictions and the pandemic, in-person traffic has decreased, prompting more community outreach by the LHI, Wiener said.
“People could not have visitors, people could not freely move around the hospital buildings as they once did,” Wiener said. “Missy [Creed] set up a kiosk where she was providing information at our vaccination stations at the Schottenstein Center and over at University Hospitals East. We’re definitely seeing no traffic in the library, but we are shifting to be where consumers are.”
In 2019-20, a partially pre-pandemic year, the LHI answered 434 reference questions and had 253 physical visitors, Wiener said in an email.
“So far this year and through her various outreach efforts, Missy has reached nearly 900 patients and community members through events, vaccination clinics, information booths and virtual reference questions,” Wiener said in an email.
Wiener said the LHI works to make sure people know how to access reliable information and navigate the web to avoid misinformation by creating content on their website.
“We are also creating our own videos, our own interviews with our OSU experts on a variety of patient health topics,” Wiener said. “We just completed work for a grant from the National Library of Medicine where we had a video series on helping people find reliable health information on the web.”
Creed stressed the role of the LHI as a resource simply to inform and educate those looking to comprehend.
“The Library for Health Information does not give out medical advice. I do not come from a medical background,” Creed said. “We highly encourage them to talk to their primary care provider, their doctor, their nurse practitioner, to say, ‘This is what I found on the internet, this is what I got from a library or even a public library.’ That starts that conversation with the doctor, the nurse, the health care provider, for more personalized, better health.”
Wiener said the medical center is building a new hospital east of Cannon Drive, and she is excited about the possibility for the LHI to be relocated there.
“We would love to be part of that new, newly renovated space. We have been in discussions about where the Library for Health Information might fit within that new center,” Wiener said. “One goal of ours is to have a presence in the new hospital and be part of the busy traffic as patients and their families move by.”
